Rhymes alternate in this classic song to an abab cadence, but Dylan is more dedicated to the b-rhymes than he is to the a’s.  The a’s have echo rhymes (long/long) or imperfect rhymes (ends/winds) or no rhyming (all/night), so on one level the rhymes fade but on another they don’t.

The best rhyme for my money is storm/warm.  That rhyme will never fade for me.  Somethings just never fade, as an image of a loved one.  Unlike the girl in “Trying To Get To Heaven,” whose “memory grows dimmer” and doesn’t haunt the singer “like it did before,” this girl from the north country just can’t be shaken.  Most of the time Dylan keeps to his rhymes, but all of the time he let’s us see her; her image is vivid with that warm coat he wants her wearing and that long hanging hair that flows down to her breasts; we can fill in the rest, and what we fill in won’t shake us either.  Anyone ever caught in love’s thrall keeps such images with them forever, and usually they are affixed to a place like a north country fair.

But not so fast. Cormac McCarthy in All the Pretty Horses has John Grady not think about Alejandra because “he did not know what was coming or how bad it would be . . . he thought she was something he’d better save.”  Perhaps the images we keep conjuring keep fading more and more each time we do.  But songs like this one keep such images forever fresh, forever young.

According to my twitter pals, Ian Wilkinson and Phil, this delightful video of the song is from a February of 1964 Canadian TV special.